A small discovery
by Deyanire
Summary: Dr Kleiner is perceived as an absent-minded scientist. During his work he makes a very scientific discovery but not in a field of physics. His curiosity raises and he decides to follow it. Kleiner's POV. Post Episode 2.


_"This isn't lust. Lust wants, does the obvious, and pads back into the forest. Love is greedier. Love wants round-the-clock care; protection; rings, vows, joint accounts; scented candles on birthdays; life insurance. Babies. Love's a dictator." –_

 _David Mitchell, The Bone Clocks_

Doctor Isaac Kleiner was sitting in his laboratory alone. The messy room was dark and filled with the orange gloom of the computer monitor. Thousands of numbers were running in the front of his eyes as he scrolled them. Kleiner was analyzing the data from Gordon's H.E.V. suit: all life supporting systems were programmed to archive the basics, like a heartbeat rate or blood pressure, and the non-essential, but certainly important records about the user. Watching a huge amount of data on his monitor screen, he was comparing these readings with the other ones.

Isaac Kleiner was deeply focused on that part, because Gordon's life depended on his correctly estimated numbers for the suit. He had to be very careful when he was tinkering with the computer onboard: badly calculated amounts of anti-neurotoxin or morphine could kill Gordon in the blink of an eye instead of helping him. He waited for the new batch of data to be loaded from the H.E.V. suit. The process of downloading data was quite slow and the percent level moved sluggishly in the monitor screen.

Kleiner looked away from the monitor for a moment and his attention was caught by the capsule standing in the middle of the room. Inside of it was safely closed the H.E.V. suit, which had been worn by Gordon from the very first moment he crossed the threshold of Black Mesa East until the recent tragic events in White Forest. Eli's death has shocked Isaac Kleiner deeply. He was relieved to hear that at least Gordon and Alyx survived, even if they both were in bad shape: she was crushed by her father's unexpected death, and Gordon was still lying unconscious in the med bay, having taken a really bad beating from the Advisors.

Isaac Kleiner took this opportunity to examine the H.E.V. suit and made some maintenance because, surely, the suit needed it after all this heavy wear. He stood up from his chair and walked a few steps closer to the capsule. He adjusted his glasses and took a closer look at it. Now, he could see all the details of the suit: the bullet scratches and holes, some alien detritus; orange paint was peeling away in some places and lambda logo was flecked with dried blood. Kleiner shivered a little: it was probably Gordon's blood. It had just come to his mind that his old protégé had stopped being a scientist and become something other: a soldier, a fighter, and that was irreversible. Gordon, since they met for the first time after these eighteen years, never asked about anything related to physics. He didn't even try to apply himself to the scientific subjects. The first and the last time Kleiner had seen Gordon's interest in his field was the moment when he read clippings from newspapers talking about the Incident and alien's invasion. Kleiner had surreptitiously looked at the man reading these pieces on the wall, and noticed that look on his face - his wide opened eyes and slightly open mouth, and in that moment he understood that everything that Gordon encountered on his way was shocking and a nasty surprise for him. When Kleiner tried to ask him about the time that Gordon had spent before he appeared in City 17 he heard nothing from him. Gordon was stubbornly silent when it came to these questions: he always averted his head with a strange look on his face, and it was obvious that it made him very uncomfortable. Isaac Kleiner was not a man of action, but he could understand Gordon's position: it wasn't his choice to become a soldier, a killing machine, that had to murder other humans, even if these creatures have been controlled by the Combine.

Kleiner breathed a deep sigh and walked away from the capsule. He sat on his chair in front of the computer. With his arms crossed he absently watched his monitor screen again. Some of the data had been downloaded from the H.E.V. mainframe and he broke away his free-floating stream of thoughts and took a closer look at it. He could see a lot of new data concerning Gordon's vital statistics during use of the suit. He was not a biologist, but he tried to analyze these readings. It was provided as a long table consisting of the measured values: blood level and its precise test was the first part of it, next indicator was blood pressure, the heartbeat ratio, saturation, the levels of hormones and neurotransmitters, hydration and many others, like general information about the nervous system. Kleiner noticed that there were strong fluctuations of blood level and pressure which came along with high use of morphine. When he proceeded to the next indicators, he could see that his heartbeat ratio and adrenal cortical hormones were exceeding the scale – even if Kleiner wasn't a doctor he knew it was symptom of excruciating pain. Kleiner was still impressed how Gordon could bear it. Of course it was the synthetic morphine analog and bug juice which kept him standing, otherwise he would not be able to even walk alone. What was bothering Kleiner was the hydration level – way below the limit values. He knew that during his so-called travels Gordon wasn't able to properly drink and eat, but the H.E.V. should maintain him. If it wasn't able to keep his hydration level Kleiner had to take care of that and set the controls properly.

When Kleiner checked the adrenaline level he noticed that it was extremely high but not yet scoring near the limit like the previous ones. It was interesting, because the suit should control the stress level and thus the adrenaline. He adjusted his glasses and took a closer look on the monitor. Scrolling the table, he noted other indicators: hormones and neurotransmitters. The levels of these were surprisingly high, especially dopamine and serotonin, but his testosterone level was decreasing on the other hand. As far as Kleiner remembered the previous readings concerning these indicators were significantly lower, however testosterone was decreasing from some time. He converted the view from the table to a bar graph and took another look. Still, the columns were higher than the ones from a previous data batch and that was puzzling. These values should be also controlled by the H.E.V. suit but somehow the machine couldn't keep them in check. Was it some kind of computer error, maybe Gordon was ill, maybe it was way too many chemicals in his body and it caused this irregularity? Kleiner couldn't find any logical connection between these indicators: why were precisely those neurotransmitters so high and the hormones so low? He checked the dates of the files: the first one was created just after Gordon arrived in the City 17 and the last was a fresh batch of data. He opened all the files chronologically, one after another and he could notice that the level of those chemical compounds had been growing since the beginning of Gordon's stay in City 17. That was even more perplexing: something must have caused it when he started his 'journey', but what?

What was the reason of constant growth of exactly those indicators but not other ones? The adrenaline growth was obvious: it was caused by the stress, and the machine wasn't able to control it, but serotonin and dopamine was not explainable, and why was testosterone decreasing? He needed to do a lots of reading about these subjects. As far as Kleiner remembered several diseases of the nervous system were associated with dysfunctions of the dopamine system like Parkinson's disease or schizophrenia: Gordon didn't seem to have any of them even before the Incident. Whereas serotonin is released as a signal in response to positive events, and its deficiency causes depression. The latter didn't fit Gordon again, but the former was interesting: what kind of positive event was causing serotonin increase? Kleiner had no idea what could it be. Testosterone level was declining and he had no idea why the androgen, which should be high, due to the constant fighting and aggression was so low.

He remembered that on the computer was installed a biology encyclopedia, a simple but maybe useful source of information. Maybe there he could find an answer on the questions about strange correlation between those hormones and neurotransmitters. He started checking words: first "serotonin", then "dopamine" but these didn't give him any hint, and then, when he got to "testosterone", he found an answers to his questions:

" _Falling in love decreases men's testosterone levels", "Stress causes increased production of cortisol. For men's health, it is important that the increased secretion of cortisol has a direct impact on reducing the production of DHEA, which results in reduced levels of testosterone in the body."_

and next:

" _Studies in neuroscience have involved chemicals that are present in the brain and might be involved when people experience love. These chemicals include: nerve growth factor, testosterone, estrogen, dopamine, norepinephrine, serotonin, oxytocin, and vasopressin. Dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin are more commonly found during the attraction phase of a relationship"._

Kleiner at first stared deeply in the monitor screen, then started to smile and then burst out a small laugh. He was so oblivious to some things: Gordon was just deeply attracted to someone. Kleiner thought he should sit with his nose stuck in the computer and take a look around more often: it sometimes resulted in very interesting discoveries, especially in the realm of social life. He was filled with relief that these readings meant nothing dangerous for Gordon. Well, there was an obvious sign that Gordon is under a severe stress, and this was something that Kleiner couldn't fix, but on the other hand he needed to take closer look on what he just noticed. The old Doctor had some ideas what he should do now: first of all he was very curious who is the person who caught Gordon's attention. It was first time when something different than physics draw Kleiner's mind to absolutely new field – psychology, and he was going to take a closer look onto it.


End file.
